Xcode 4 Cookbook by Steven F. Daniel

xcode4cookbook

Summary: Typical cookbook

When it comes to the content of this book, I would vote here for something between three and four stars. Why? Well, first off all, the idea of the book is really good. Sometimes, you simply don’t fell like getting through all the details is a right thing to do. Sometimes, all you need is just a quick recipe of how to do things. But, as I said, quick recipes are all you want. And here come drawbacks of some of the recipes in this book. They are simply too long. At some point you just feel like you have lost a track of what’s really happening (e.g. Building iCloud application – this recipe has 50 steps!). Of course, this is just an extremum. On the other hand, you have very useful recipes (very short ones) regarding instrumentation. OK, you just get some basics in case of this topic, but if you haven’t used Instruments never, ever before, it will be just enough.

There is one more thing I haven’t found quite useful. Recipes that focus on building applications. The point here is, that this kind of stuff shouldn’t come into this book in a first place. This kind of approach focuses too much on the overlay architecture rather than on small pieces.

On the other hand, there is a part that I strongly advice to people who are starting their experience with XCode, iOS and all that stuff. That is, “Packaging and Deploying Your Application”. If you try to do it by yourself, it becomes something that you will remember for your life :) And, this is the place where this book should definitely, help you.

For me, personally, this book is not a cover to cover one. I have found here few nice ideas, but I can’t say that all the topics and their explanations where breath takers. Some of there where simply too long, some of them where just right, and some of them really surprised me in a positive way.

One more remark. This book is a typical cookbook, so, do not expect deep and detailed analysis of the topics.

For me, this book is like 3-4 stars.

PACKT: XCode 4.0 Cookbook
Safari Books Online: XCode 4.0 Cookbook